Lauffer side Christmas

We had a great time at Andy and Katie's house, which has become our Christmas tradition, enjoying an Italian feast and cozy atmosphere to celebrate Christmas with Christian's side of the family. Micah enjoys all the attention he receives, and it will be interesting to see how he adjusts when his baby brother comes. Nonetheless, we had a great time, as are observed by the pictures below. Thanks for the fun gifts, Grandma and Grandpa, and Uncle Andy and Aunt Katie!!

Do I even remember how to blog?!?!

Amazing how much time can pass in between blog posts for me right now! I've definitely fallen off the map, but I am determined to get back on track so that those who follow my blog to keep up with our little life can continue to do so:)

Following this post will be numerous post including the past two week's events when Christian and I were both off of work and enjoyed time together as a family, and with our families!

One of the major developments in my life is that I have become a consultant for a company called Norwex. It's an enviromentally friendly company that is devoted to drastically reducing the use of chemicals in cleaning and personal care. I started consulting in early November, and over the 2 months have had pretty decent success...we'll see where it goes, but for now I'm really enjoying what I'm doing with it, and love helping others find a way to make cleaning "fun" (if that's possible:)). If you are interested at all in checking it out for yourselves, feel free to go to my website. kellylauffer.norwex.biz.

The main reason I decided to start consulting now, is because the other new development in our life is that Christian and I have decided for me to stay home next year with our two children. I'm very excited, and feel extremely blessed, to have this opportunity and look forward to what the future holds. It's a little scary thinking about not bringing in my share of the income (thus the Norwex to help a little) but we know that God is in control and feel His blessing on our decision for me to stay home.

On that note, baby #2 is doing well and really starting to move around. I'm at 25 weeks Thursday, and although I still have 15 to go (which I know will probably crawl at times!) I also know that there's only 15 weeks to go before our lives change drastically - for the better of course - and pray that we are all ready for those changes, Micah included. He is such a fun little boy (including the strong willed, stubborn boy that he is at times) and we are excited to bring another little boy into our family.

Christian enjoyed a nice 2 1/2 weeks off of work and is back to the grind, traveling to Louisville today and London and California the week of his birthday, so I am also praying he doesn't get burnt out too quickly after the restful (or not so restful with a 19 month old running around) time off.

So there is a little update on our lives and what's been going on during my blogging hiatus. Like I said, many posts to come with pictures included over our time off together. Thanks for the patience!

Oh Boy, Oh Boy!

I think most know at this point, but we're happy to announce that Micah's going to be a big brother in April...to a little brother:) We had our ultrasound last Saturday and we were able to see little boy Lauffer in all his glory. What a joy to see this healthy baby on the screen and let the excitement and anticipation grow for the day we will get to meet him.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Micah Faces

I know I've posted about Micah's faces before, but he is such a ham! His latest is he'll turn to us with his face scrunched up and we mimic, or we will look at him and scrunch our own face and he'll mimic. Truly, it cracks me up! This kid is hilarious.

20 weeks is here.

I am halfway there! It's been a bit of a rough pregnancy, seeing that I'm still experiencing sick days and have had some major cramping issues occurring. I'm getting good days mixed in with the bad, however, and know it's all worth it because I'm growing a little human being inside my belly! So when I hit the 20 week mark yesterday, I realized I'm getting closer and closer to Micah's sibling becoming a reality. We get to find out the sex soon, and plan to announce it via our Christmas cards - so all should know soon enough:)

The picture below shows me at 20 weeks with Micah, and then with this baby. I'm clearly bigger this time around:) but I guess that's bound to happen seeing that my belly was stretched out pretty large last time around, haha. It's not so bad at this point, but knowing how large I will be getting in the next 20 weeks seems a bit frightening to think about. Oh well - such is life!

18 months!

Wow - 1 1/2 years old - can't believe that's where Micah is now! He's such a big boy and we have enjoyed all 18 months of his life. We have entered a not-so-fun toddler stage where he'll be happy go lucky one minute and then totally melting down the next, but the doctor said that verbal explosion usually happens between 18 months and 2 years. Once he's able to communicate more clearly, those temper tantrums should start to cease...it will be nice when we get there, but even so we're figuring out how to handle them.

I just wanted to share his doctor stats from his check-up yesterday.

19.7 inches head circumference = 95% head
26.4 pounds = 60% weight
33 inches = 72% height

Due to the fact that he's only at 8 teeth, that puts him developmentally at the 14-15 month range. And according to my doctor (assuming I understood her correctly) there's some type of correlation between teeth development and height...which I think means she was trying to say he's going to be tall. We'll see in due time if that holds true, but we are definitely glad to see him growing in height lately.

We love you sweet Micah and can't believe in less than 5 months you're going to be a big brother!

Reading is so fun to do!

Micah is a huge reader! If given the choice, he would have us read to him most of his waking hours:) Lately, as we have been working on more independent play, he has also grown to reading to himself. Last weekend we set him up in a chair, gave him 15 library books, and let him go to town.

Today Micah was taking one of his books and reading it aloud. There are literally 3 words in the entire book: hug, Bobo (a baby monkey) and Mommy. Although he's not right on with the words in the book, he does a pretty good job of reading it to himself and uses the same inflection in his voice that Christian and I do when reading it to him. Love that boy:)